Sermon 050910 Mother’s Day
Acts 16:9-15
Happy Mother’s Day! I hope many of you have started the day well, maybe breakfast in bed, or getting to sleep in a little, or maybe just a card or flowers. Mother’s Day is a great day! And it just so happens that we have a great mother to talk about today from our Bible Readings. As we’ve gone through the book of Acts following Easter, we’ve met up with a number of remarkable people, and today is no different. Today we meet Lydia. There is a lot you can say about her, but one of the most important things is that Lydia ends up being the first Christian to live in Europe! And with many of us being of European descent, that is a pretty big deal.
What is interesting, is that if it were up to Paul and the other guys on the missionary journey, we might never had heard of Lydia. They were all set to go toward the coast of Asia and then on to Bithynia, and that made sense, these places were the logical next steps. But God said, “No.” Acts says, “the Holy Spirit kept them from preaching the word in the province of Asia,” and when they, “tried to enter the Bithynia, the Spirit of Jesus would not let them.” “What’s going on?” must have been the big question bouncing around in their minds. What is it that God has in store?
Well, he told them. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. Not the move that they had planned on making, but they went (there is a whole sermon here, but we won’t get into that right now).
Anyways, the boat goes to the island of Samothrace, then next day they land at Neopolis, and then they head right for Philippi, as Luke describes it in our reading, “A leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.” A good place to go, no doubt! But I can’t help that they got there, all fired up after rushing to get there, and then though, “OK, now what!?” They were there for, “some days” before anything ever happened.
But they asked around apparently, to find out where the Synagogue was. And the response they got, I imagine, more often than not was, “What’s a Synagogue?” And even if they knew, they probably wouldn’t have said anything. Just a short while earlier, the Roman Emperor Claudius had expelled all of the Jews from Rome. And if there was one thing that the Philippians prided themselves on more than any other, it was the high rank and title bestowed upon their city by Rome. They were not Italian, but Rome considered them so (might have had just a little with the vast amounts of gold they had, but mostly, I’m sure, because they were fine people). So we can only assume that after hearing of Claudius’ ruling about the Jews, the leadership in Philippi would have tripped over themselves in their haste to kick the Jews out of Philippi as well.
So there wasn’t much there for the disciples. They must have thought, “why would God lead us HERE of all places?” But the Sabbath came, and this group of four men headed out toward the Gangites River, about a mile outside of town, to the only place they could guess that Jews might be meeting, a small synagogue or something. Well, there was no synagogue. They didn’t have the 10 Jewish men required to have a synagogue. In fact, there were no men there that day at all. There was a small group of women, meeting to pray.
The reading goes right on to tell us about Lydia, and we’ll get to her. But we need to stop here for a second, and talk about these women. I wish I had their names, every one of them. Because they are among the great heroes of the faith. They are the ones we need to learn from in the times in which we live. They were faith warriors. They had every reason to give up, every excuse for not meeting anymore handed to them on a silver platter. The men were no longer there, there was no church, there was no possibility of having a synagogue, the Romans were always either persecuting, or threatening to persecute the Jews, and sticking to their faith was not going to win them any popularity contests in Philippi. But yet, they came to the river. Every Saturday they came to meet, to pray, to carry on their faith. If that doesn’t get your heart pumping, I don’t know what would.
Things aren’t that much different now. We live in a society where people feel so free to make fun of Christ and Christians. Where the name of the Lord is not honored in fact people use it as a curse word, or a joke. We live in times where people will bend over backwards to keep from offending people but, will look at you funny, or even get mad at you if you stick up for your faith. There is nothing new under the sun. We need to be like these women, to say, “I know what I believe, I know what matters most, I will worship the One True God no matter what.”
Well we do know the name of one of the women. A beautiful name she had, Lydia. She wasn’t a Jew. She grew up in a town called Thyatira, and undoubtedly started her life worshipping Tyrimnas, the local Sun God. We don’t know exactly when she started coming to the meetings by the river, outside the gates of Philippi, but we do know what brought her from Thyatira to the big city. Purple.
She dealt in Purple. Now that may seem odd for us to hear, because if you go to JCPenny, the purple blouse, or sweatshirt costs just the same as the red one, or yellow one, or green one. But not so in the ancient world. Purple was only for the rich. In order to dye something purple, one had to get the pigment from a certain shellfish off the coast (Murex Trunculus for those of you who are a little nerdy like me). It took hundreds of these mashed up shellfish to dye just a couple of yards of cloth. So this was a big deal. I should say, and expensive deal.
And Roman citizens were the prime customers. So Lydia, I’m guessing after the death of her husband, knew the business, and took over the business. And it was a big business. Rich clients, high stakes, importing dye and cloth from the shellfish rich Thyatira, and retailing them in the Rodeo Drive of Philippi. She was a powerful woman, a rich woman, and there are all kinds of things we can admire about her, and talk about.
But I’m sure, that Lydia really wouldn’t want us talking about any of that stuff today. Because what was most important to her wasn’t her business, or her status, or her money, or her house (that had to be big and filled with family and servants, she hosted all four of the disciples and it was in no way scandalous). What was most important to her was what she learned on the banks of that river. What she learned outside the city walls, away from the hustle and bustle of the crowds, away from the rich clients and the bankers, and the business meetings.
On the banks of the Gangites, she learned a story of love, and power, of riches, and blessings like she had never heard anywhere else before. She learned of all that God had done for his people in the Old Testament. And then the picture snapped into focus even clearer, when those four men showed up unexpectedly and shared with them the fulfillment of that story of love. We read, “The Lord opened up her heart to pay attention to what Paul said.” They told her of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. How he was born miraculously into this world, to a young virgin. How he had fulfilled all of the law’s of God perfectly, where no one else could. And how in love and obedience to his father, Jesus went to the cross, to die to pay for all the sins she had committed, for this sins of the world in fact. They told her about Jesus majestic rising from the dead, and his ascension into heaven, and his promise to come back again to bring her to her Heavenly Father’s house. That is what mattered most.
Of all that Lydia could celebrate, of all the accolades that she could receive, nothing could compare to what she received that day in her baptism. Where God washed her with the water and the Word. Where God placed his name upon her forehead and upon her heart. Where she got to witness her whole household experience the same blessing. The biggest honor she had is what we see at the end of the verse. That she was baptized, and that she could serve her God, and the word of Truth.
We need Lydia today. Maybe more than ever. I don’t know what it’s like to be woman today. All the pressures. To be a great mom, to take care of a home or to be climbing the corporate ladder. To look a certain way, and to raise the perfect family, to take care of aging parents while your kids still need your help. To be a repairman, a nurse, a daughter, a wife, a worker, a counselor, and on and on, and to have all those hats stack up so high on your head. And that’s not to say that we men don’t have our struggles with hats too.
We need to think of Lydia. Who in the midst of everything going on in her life, was able to take of all those hats, if even just for a moment, and wear one. Not purple cloth exporter, not socialite, not best, or the brightest, or the most anything. No, the one hat she wore most comfortably, and happily was the one that just said, “Baptized and Redeemed Child of God.” And if there were anything that she would want us to remember about her, it wouldn’t be the other stuff, it would be just this one thing: That Christ died for her sins.
She was one who passed on her faith. To her kids, to her household, and in fact, to many people in Philippi, because it wasn’t long before there was a thriving church there. A church that warmed the Apostle Paul’s heart with joy, even while he suffered in prison. And on this Mother’s Day, remind someone, whether it be your mom, or another women, or even a man (that’s OK too!) that they helped teach you what is most important in life, to teach out about Jesus.
And do something else also. At the end of our reading, apparently the disciples refused her invitation at first to stay with her, but the ends, “And she prevailed upon us.” Let Lydia’s example prevail upon you today, if even for little while. To take of all those hats, to come and sit and rest in the love and the grace of your crucified and risen Savior. Happy Mother’s Day.
